A filling valve of this nature is known from EP-A-0,480,346. This document shows a valve body which substantially comprises a rod which, at its end, merges into a drop-shaped head. The rod is provided with guide fins. The guide fins centre the valve body and furthermore serve to convert any turbulence in a flow of medium supplied into a laminar flow. To this end, the guide fins are of elongate design.
A drawback of this known filling valve is that the known filling valve has a relatively long travel between opening and closure. This reduces the filling accuracy, in particular as a result of the portion of additional medium which is forced out of the flow passage by the valve body during a closure movement. Furthermore, in order to ensure a laminar flow of medium the guide fins have to have a specific minimum length and large numbers of these fins have to be arranged around the rod. The guide fins have to meet high demands on accuracy, which makes them difficult to manufacture and therefore expensive. Moreover, the guide fins are fragile. Although the laminar flow of medium leaving the outlet opening of the filling valve is stable and unidirectional, it results in a relatively high impact force of the medium at a bottom of a container to be filled, which may lead to for example the forming of foam.